Chinese birth tourism booms in Southern California

Any child born on U.S. soil is granted citizenship. Hundreds of expecting moms from Mexico have been crossing the border into Arizona to deliver their babies for years as a result. Now, a growing number of pregnant Chinese women are flying to the U.S. to secure their child that prized U.S. birth certificate, and Southern California has become a hot bed of what’s called “birth tourism.”

This week KTLA-TV reported on a motel in Arcadia where expectant women from China are checking in to give birth. Every three to four months a new group arrives. The hotel provides guests with a full-time nursing staff, meals and a nursery. The women are typically wealthy and pay a China-based agency about $25K in fees for travel, medical, visa and other related expenses.

After giving birth and receiving their newborn’s U.S. birth certificates and passports, the women and their babies fly back to China. As U.S. citizens the children can return when they’re older to attend school and take advantage of other benefits that go along with citizenship. Some women are also making the trip as a way to get around China’s one-child policy because the restriction doesn’t apply to those who deliver out of the country.

While hotel employees are denying that they’re running a “baby factory,” Arcadia Asst. City Manager Jason Kruckeberg told KTLA that the city is aware of the hotel’s underground operation. Even though some locals disapprove of the situation, Kruckeberg says the city has no power to stop it because nothing illegal is happening. Equipped with tourism or business visas, these women aren’t violating federal immigration laws.

Last month, the media covered a similar situation in Chino Hills where a residential home was transformed into a maternity hotel for women traveling from China. Some neighbors were so outraged by the the activity generated by the operation that they picketed outside the home.

Chino Hills resident Rossana Mitchell told CBS: “When people think of the American dream, they’re not thinking about birth tourism. They’re thinking about people who come here, immigrate here, work hard, pay their taxes, become citizens and become Americans.”

Authorities eventually shuttered the maternity hotel due to zoning issues, according to NBC.

The United States is one of many countries in the world where a child automatically receives citizenship at birth. “The U.S. law dates back to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified after the Civil War to ensure that all freed slaves and their children would be American citizens,” according to NBC.

Some lawmakers want to see an end to the practice. Representative Phil Gingrey (R-Ga) thinks the 14th Amendment should be reinterpreted so only children with at least one American parent receive citizenship. Earlier this year he introduced a legislation aimed at ending birth tourism.

But just how big is the birth tourism problem and is a new law really necessary?

NBC reports:

The most recent statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics show that births of babies on American soil to foreign mothers increased from 5,009 births in 2000 to 7,462 births in 2008. This is a tiny percentage of the more than four million babies born in America each year. There is no tracking system in place to record which countries the mothers are from or why they are in the United States.

Angela Kelley, the vice president of immigration policy and advocacy for the Center for American Progress, isn’t convinced that the birth tourism issue is big enough to warrant a reinterpretation of the Constitution.

“I don’t see this type of legislation having any traction, or being taken seriously,” Kelley told NBC. “I think something as really fundamental and integral to this nation’s character: that you’re born here, you belong here, that we’re not a country club that you apply to– that would be met with enormous resistance from all sorts of quarters…from left and from the right.”